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If it is… then surely there can’t be any harm in sleeping with him once or twice? I’ve been waffling back and forth about the possibility all morning long. Clearly, fantasies alone aren’t enough to get him fully out of my system in the way that I want. Maybe a distraction like that is exactly what I need to make myself feel like this life as Sofia is going to be the one that sticks.
It might just be because I haven’t gotten laid in such a long time, but I know that I’m going to need to see him again. At the very least, I need to get to know him better.
I haven’t been touched by a man like that since—
I shut that thought down instantly. It’s still too painful to think about my ordeal.
The lessons pass in a blur.
It's strange to think that music was the only thing that truly connected me to my mother before she died, and that now I'm passing on that knowledge despite her constant criticism that I wasn't good enough. At the very least, I'm qualified for this. It's interesting to see the connections my students make when they realize they can make music themselves.
When I made a mistake, my mother would always yank my instrument from my hands or smack the backs of my hands and knuckles with a metal tuning fork. But I'm not sure why. Not when I find it so simple to be kind to young people.
The revelation is painful, in a way, knowing it’s easy to be kind, and yet my mother still couldn’t manage it and chose against it. I tried for so many years to be better, to play perfectly. I would practice until my fingers bled, and even if the song was completed to technical perfection, she still found it lacking.
I always wondered if she hated me simply because I was a woman.
Perhaps she was simply envious that I was better at some things than she was.
My father seemed to like me more than he did her. That was probably fair. My mother always preferred my brother. Even if he couldn't play half as well as I could, she'd say he was better. He could completely fail at something and she would still declare him the winner. I had no idea what I could have done to make her hate me so much.
It certainly didn’t do anything to help foster a healthy, happy brother-sister relationship.
Now that I’m older, I wonder if she was simply projecting the feelings that she had about herself onto me. I wonder if she hated herself and saw me as a reflection of her. My father never wanted to handle any issues with me directly for the same reason: I was a daughter, not a son. Not that my brother, Alek, believed me when I told him any of this was going on.
Despite being so close in age, it always felt like we were raised in two entirely different worlds. He was groomed since birth to take over for our father. He was always supposed to be the one to pilot our legacy and wield great influence and power.
Alek never seemed to understand what that meant for him. He never realized howpowerfulour father was. Perhaps he left because the stress was too much for him. Many people believe he died, but I don't.
I know that Alek is still alive. He’s still out there somewhere. At least, I assume that he is. Given that we were never close, I didn’t want to run the risk of informing him that I didn’tactuallydie when the rest of the world thought that I did.
I wouldn’t even know where to look for him.
When it came to me, however, I was told the best I could hope for was marriage to a kind, handsome husband. I was always told that I would be traded off as a tool to gain my father more power and influence. That didn’t guarantee anything about my future husband: old, young, good-hearted, cruel—I had no say. After all, it wouldn’t matter what happened to me in the long run.
I learned the hard way that the only person who was ever going to look out for me in this life wasme. Deprived of any real sort of childhood, I learned the skills that would suit me most. Things like manipulation and espionage. I learned the best ways to use my looks to my advantage and how to keep my emotions bottled up so tightly inside of me that nothing could ever hurt me again.
I never let them out except when I'm playing. I let out every negative or sad feeling that had built up inside my chest by moving my fingers over the strings until I am lefthollowed out and empty. It's usually followed by the best night's sleep I've ever had.
As the last student leaves for the day, I don’t make any effort to hurry out the room. I just want to take a little bit more time for myself here. Here in the quiet of the auditorium, I take a long, solitary moment to stretch out. My joints crack and tension melts from my tired limbs and muscles. I pull my skirt up too high around my thighs to be considered modest in order to fit my cello in closer to my body than is technically correct.
This performance is for me, and for me alone.
CHAPTERNINE
Helena
Music pours out of my fingers like a bleeding wound.
I don’t hide my emotions from my face. I let my body move into my instrument and take comfort in the sturdiness that it provides to me. Tension builds and falls in my chest as I lose myself. For just the span of this piece, I let everything go. I’m so lost in the moment that I created for myself that I don’t hear the auditorium door open.
I don’t notice that I’m no longer alone until the footsteps of the person who has joined me are near enough for me to hear—until they’re near enough for me to feel their eyes on me.
My bow skids to an abrupt halt and a sharp note whistles through the air suddenly.
My heart is pounding like a rabbit found in a snare. My pupils are blown wide as I jerk my head up to see the face of my intruder. I expect a student but come to find myself eye to eye with the same man that I spent all morning fantasizing about.
Daniel.
